NLIS_and_tagging

To ensure tracebility of livestock, cattle, sheep, and managed goats must be identified with an NLIS (Australia's National Livestock Identification System) compliant ear tag before they leave the property on which they were born-tagged.

Different to cattle, which must be identified individually, sheep and goats are only required to be identified on a mob base. In practice this means that cattle need to be marked with an unique electronic ear tag, whereas all sheep or goats from a particular property can be marked with the same visual tag, which must contain either the brand of the producer or the PIC (Property IdentificationCode).

We manage our goat herd on the base of individuals. This requires that every animal is identified with an unique code. Normally, every goat kid is ear-tagged within the first two weeks of its life (females: left, males: right). Our brand is A8S. To identify the different generations (i.e. years), we use different colours and a code for every year. The year code is followed by the number of the kid born.